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Sunday, April 20, 2008

I've been cooking up a storm this evening. I'm sure you'll see the product in due time. But first, I need to catch up on older posts.

A week or so ago, I picked up a cookbook I hadn't given much attention to since Giz first sent it to me.

When I'm going through a cookbook, I'll usually sit with little sticky notes to mark the pages that look interesting to me. Maybe I was hungry when I sat down to look through this cookbook, but almost half of the pages have been tagged. I'd say that makes for a good cookbook. I think the trick is attractive and plentiful pictures. Like my food blog preferences, I like to see the food. It tells me what kind of product I can expect if I make the recipe (correctly) myself.

Since basil is one of my favourite herbs (parsley is another favourite), I decided to go with Linguine with Rataouille Sauce. I added spicy Italian sausage.

1. Cut up sausage into smaller pieces. Cook the sausage and then remove from pan in order to cook the remaining ingredients.

2. In a large frying pan, heat the oil over moderate heat (I added less oil since there was fat from the sausages remaining). Add the onion and bell pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the eggplant, zucchini, garlic, salt and black pepper. Reduce the heat to moderately low and cook, covered, for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Add the tomatoes and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in the vinegar. Toward the end of the 10 minutes, stir the sausage into the tomato and vegetable mixture.

4. In a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook the linguine (I used spaghettini) until just done, about 12 minutes. Reserve about 1/2 cup of pasta-cooking water. Drain the pasta and toss with the vegetables, the 1/2 cup basil, and if the pasta seems too dry, some of the reserved pasta-cooking water. Serve topped with 2 tbsp of basil.

Hola Psychgrad! Pasta dishes always look so attractive to me!!! Your Ratatouille is like our Samfaina and I adore it!!!! I bet my daughter would beg for your dish :D. Will have it in mind for my next pasta dish. Thanks darling!

I'm pretty amused about your habit of using stickies and steering clear of cookbooks without tons o pictures. Until embarassingly recently, I refused to consult or purchase a cookbooks that didn't have pictures in it... which rules out waaaay to many excellent books. I'm recovering, learning to be inspired by titles instead. Recipes really are marketing themselves, so if there's no picture and a blah sounding title.. well...

BTW, the pasta looks excellent. Maybe it's because I'm craving spagetthi right now (it's a rainy day in D.C., good day for comfort food), but I'm glad you didn't opt for Peter's penne this time around. :)

Since we refer to family members, here's a key to clarify who's who

R - Psychgrad's hubby. Is the cook responsible for many of the recipes but usually does not post himself (unless it is to complain about our food obsession or share a dish that he loves -- usually poutine).

E- Practicing her skills as ruler of the world (or her little brother, K).

K - Cool little bro -- biding his time until he's big enough to take down E.

BACFF

The members of BloggerAid-Changing the Face of Famine have published a cookbook where 100% of the proceeds target children and education through the World Food Programme called School Meals. Purchases can be made by clicking the cookbook cover above.